What are the Symptoms of Parental Alienation

1. What are the Symptoms of Parental Alienation? 1. A Campaign of Denigration: This pattern occurs when the child suffering from parental alienation continually disparages, belittles, or undervalues the targeted parent with little legitimate justification. When children express negativity about one parent, it is usually excessive, unimaginative, and repeated much more aggressively than the typical parent-child relationship would sustain. When they more often reflect influences from the alienating parent rather than their own authentic thoughts or feelings. 2. Presence of Borrowed Scenarios: In this symptom, the child recounts narratives, accusations, or negative commentary about the targeted parent that the child cannot have overtly or realistically experienced themselves. These "borrowed" phrases typically come off as scripted or rehearsed and provide evidence that the child is including or taking on the alienating parent's script rather than constructing their own perspective. 3. Absence of Ambivalence: In healthy relationships, individuals will have ambivalence in their feelings, but a child will usually enumerate 'positive' and 'negative' qualities in each parent. Parent-child alienation.

2. The child will only exhibit extreme, one-sided prerogatives in the same tone and nature, and be charged with the prior parent being wholly "bad" or completely without redeemable qualities. Fair to say, black or white thinking is a clear indicator of psychological influence for the enjoyment of the alienation. 4. Expansion of Hostility: The child's hostility broadens in scope, being directed at the other parent's relatives, friends, or extended family. For example, they may reject, or even respond with anger, toward grandparents, cousins, step-siblings, or close family friends, even when they had previously enjoyed a warm, amicable relationship with the child. 5. Unquestioned Support of the Alienating Parent: When parents disagree or argue, the child under parental alienation unthinkingly aligns with the alienating parent, without question, pause, or reflection. This seemingly reflexive loyalty indicates that the child feels pressured to support the alienating parent to remain in the good graces of the alienating parent and/or not to upset the alienating parent. 6. Lack of Remorse for the Alienated Parent's Mistreatment: The alienated child may treat the targeted parent harshly or even

3. disrespectfully, and, after the fact, express no remorse. Even when the treatment is excessive, cruel, dismissive, or inappropriate, the child believes that their actions are defensible because they feel they have a right to mistreat the alienated parent. 7. Weak, Ridiculous, or Trivial Justifications for the Vilification: When the alienated child is asked why they "dislike" or "want nothing to do with" the alienated parent, the child often offers justifications that are weak, trivial, or simply nonsensical. The logic of their justification does not appear to be proportional to their "dislike". To some extent, these weak justifications reveal that the child's rejection is not based on observable, actual experiences with the alienated parent, but rather on frustration and influence from the alienating parent. 8. The Independent-Thinker Effect: To protect the alienating parent from fault, the child insists that their unfavorable opinions are entirely their own. It does not matter that the reasoning or verbiage clearly shows evidence of outside influence; the child proclaims that they have made their own decision to reject the other parent. This gives the impression that the child's disdain is independent of the alienating parent.